This goes a bit with Christian's suggestion to separate edit time and run time front panel sizes.
While I do appreciate the alignment grid on the front panel I find it insufficient a lot of the times. What I would like to see is some alignment helpers similar to the ones that are provided in the form editor of MS Visual Studio:
- When you move a control close to another control, it automatically displays a standard distance "helper" that you can snap to.
- When you move the edge of one control close to the edge (in one dimension) of another control a vertical or horizontal line is drawn from that other control to which you can snap, regardless of whether it happens to sit on a grid line or not.
- When you move a control close to the edge of the front panel a standard distance "helper" is displayed that you can snap to.
All of these features should be available for a move as well as for a resize of the controls.
You can find screen shots of what I am talking about here and here.